Breaking Walls uses literary, vocal, and visual art, chinomtography, dance, instrumental music, and theatrical performance to build global peace and acceptance. We promote an ever-expanding, diverse, equitable, inclusive, and trusting world cultivated by our artists, leadership apprentices, and ambassadors.

Breaking Walls’ young people represent agents, beneficiaries, and victims of significant societal changes. A paradox confronts them: to seek integration into an existing order while also serving as a force to transform that order. In the Breaking Walls tradition, finding their place on the world stage is not a solitary journey but a collaborative, socially integrative one.

Arts Education In-School Workshop

Breaking Walls collaborates with students and educators in the New York City public, private, and charter schools to focus teen minds on identity, values, and empathy. It guides them to explore significant, current issues in their lives while building literacy, critical thinking, and presentation skills. Starting in November 2017, Breaking Walls Arts Education began collaborating with students at the Paula Furst Schule in Berlin. Plans to expand into classrooms in the Barcelona, Cape Town, and Lisbon public and private school systems are in progress.

Community-Based Retreat 

Young people ages 12 to 17 from two or more distinct cultures join in a five-day arts residency/Retreat. Through creating Art together, these Breaking Walls artists will boldly learn much about themselves and other youth cultures, enabling them to see they are not alone and to leave prejudices behind, inspiring the world with their robust resilience and hope for the future.

International Summit 

A Summit is an annual event that prioritizes inclusivity, ensuring participation regardless of gender, socioeconomic background, ethnicity, migration status, or ability. As of 2026, 40 young artists from Breaking Walls programming in Barcelona, Berlin, Brooklyn, Cape Town, Palermo, Santiago, Sarajevo, Tangier, Warsaw, Yerevan, and Istanbul will gather in a forum that highlights young voices, spending 17 days writing, performing, and sharing life stories.

Each young Breaking Walls artist returns to their home community having explored their imagination, embraced their creativity, and be ready in the areas of compassion, collaboration, accountability, and commitment to nurture a world in which we can all trust one another.